Abstract
The Arabian Gulf is one of the regions in the world experiencing major changes due to increased economic growth rates and development practices. As a shallow water body within a hot desert, the Gulf is exposed to obvious warming in the sea surface temperatures (SST). Remotely sensed SST data were utilized to estimate decadal change in SST with a focus on coral reef locations. There is a positive trend in monthly time series SSTs, with a maximum value of about 0.7 °C/decade for the western side of the Gulf. This high trend of SST is associated with significant coral reef bleaching and it coincides with major climate/ocean interactions. Most of the Arabian countries along the Gulf have coastal developments at low-land areas of high vulnerability to sea level rise. Digital elevation models showed that there are more than 3100 km2 of coastal areas that occur at 1 m level along the Arabian countries of the Gulf. Coastal protection and conservation measures are crucial to protect low-lying coasts of urban use.
Highlights
Global climate change has caused worldwide concern due to its adverse effects on the global ecosystems and society [1]
There is a warming by 2 ◦ C for all regions, but, in the summer, the entire Gulf warms up to reach its maximum temperatures in August (33–35 ◦ C), which means that the Gulf is considered to be the warmest sea in the world [40]
As coral bleaching is recorded in regions of high sea surface temperatures (SST) trend, it could attribute this bleaching to the seawater warming
Summary
Global climate change has caused worldwide concern due to its adverse effects on the global ecosystems and society [1]. The sea surface temperature (SST) was observed to increase in the Indian. Ocean for the period from 2000 to 2013 in response to the greenhouse gas forcing, with a low increase in the northern part and much high increase in the south of the Indian Ocean [2]. Ocean experienced warming in the western side for the period 1960–2004 associated with El Niño events [3]. During the period of 2002–2012, the tropical Indian Ocean has shown a continued increase in SST as compared to a cooling trend in the tropical Pacific Ocean ad this warming in the Indian Ocean was triggered by the El Niño events [4]. The Indian Ocean is characterized by two distinct eastern and western zones of SST known as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) [5]. Wang et al, [6] observed that this polarity is influenced by the El Niño/La Niña Southern
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